NRZ eyes more agreements

THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) is currently negotiating with some partners in the shipping line, with a view to signing more service level agreements to boost business, an official has said.

Last year, NRZ signed a deal with Zimasco and CFM of Mozambique, which saw the parastatal moving about one million tonnes of chrome annually from the Great Dyke to the ports of Beira and Maputo along the Mozambican rail network.

"Currently, we have two or three service level agreements that we are looking at and working on, but we haven't signed anything," the company's spokesperson Nyasha Maravanyika told NewsDay in an interview.

"We are negotiating with some partners in the shipping line there and hope that something will come up but at the moment since the NRZ-Zimasco and CFM agreement there is nothing, but we will definitely be updating you on how far we have gone with the ones that we are working on."

Recently, Maravanyika revealed that NRZ exceeded its total revenue target by 5% in the first quarter of the year to $18,9 million buoyed by service level agreements.

Budgeted revenue was $18 million.

"In terms of our performance as NRZ in the first quarter, we managed to exceed our total revenue target by 5%. We had targeted to have certain revenue from January to March and then because of the company's performance we managed to exceed that by 5%," Maravanyika said.

He said during the period under review, they managed to move 556 000 tonnes of freight.

This year it targets to move 4 million tonnes.

On the Diaspora Investment Development Group (DIDG)/Transnet Consortium deal, Maravanyika said all was on course with the two parties having done due diligence and the deal is expected to be signed by end of next month.